See you at ADHOC?

Thanks to those who voted on my Wednesday question, both via the comments and via AIM, I decided to propose a talk at ADHOC, the conference formerly known as MacHack. Those guys are quick — they've already accepted my proposal, so that's where I'll be at the end of July.

For those of you who said, "Ya gotta go to ADHOC," the question now is, should I bring Sean with me?

Friday Pope Blogging

As mentioned last week, I have announced my candidacy to become the next Pope. Here's a quick update to let you know how things are going. First, I'd like to thank those of you who have offered your support and endorsement. Your efforts will not go unrewarded. I appreciate your votes of confidence; alas, those votes will not be counted in the Sistine Chapel next week. So the campaign continues amongst the cardinals who will be met in sacred conclave.

As you know, the conclave commences next Monday, and my sources tell me that it will be a contentious event. The cardinals will choose, and I feel certain that they will choose wisely by picking me. I am sure that the rest of the papabili will swallow their understandable disappointment and come to support my ascension. In preparation, I have already begun to have myself fitted for the proper vestments, as you can see here. Nice hat, eh?

This morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table when there was a knock at the door. I had been anticipating just such a visit; I expected to be interviewed about my plans for the Church. Sadly, it was not the emissaries from the Vatican, but rather some ordinary evangelical Christians. They sought to convert me to their false beliefs! I had no choice but to scourge them and drive them from my front porch. With the Lord's strength behind me, they could not stand, and fled down the street, shrieking.

I'd like to address some of the comments from my announcement. Dan Wood, you will not only be able to boast that the Pope gave your product four mice in Macworld, I'll be happy to authorize you to look through the secret places under the Vatican. Please look out for the antimatter. Dori, I still haven't decided what your title will be; I've narrowed it down to Papal Consort or Popatrix. Tom Bridge, thanks for your early support. James, Santiago de Los Angeles, raises some good points. When I am Pope, priests who love too much and in all the wrong places will not be sheltered, but will face full civil punishment. Cardinal Law will return to Boston to answer his critics. Steve Jobs would probably consider sainthood to be redundant, so there's no need. And if I can become Pope, I see no need for Dori to convert.

More from me next week, when Friday Pope Blogging returns!

Obligatory big cat pun goes here

If you read blogs other than this one, or you read any tech news, you know that Apple's new Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger has officially been announced as shipping on April 29. Just a few quick thoughts here:

• Apple has a decent feature comparison with Panther and Jaguar here. It's supposed to make you wonder how you ever lived with the coolness that's in Tiger, and it does a decent job.
  
  
• I like this list of new features better, though. Even though I've been testing with Tiger for a few months, there were still a few things on this list that surprised me.
  
  
• About the only new thing I found out about Dashboard was this graphic on the Dashboard features page. .Mac members-only access to selected widgets, eh? Are those going to be for-pay, or for free? How are they going to keep people from sharing them with their friends? I'll be keeping an eye out for how Apple handles this.
  
  
• Sadly, I don't have a computer that supports Core Image. Color me disappointed. The new PowerBooks do support it, but mine is 18 months old so it's just too out-of-date.
  
  
• I've heard varying stories as to whether or not my PowerBook will support iChat AV multi-person video chats. According to that page, the answer is yes. While I won't be able to initiate them, I will be able to participate. Whew!
  
  
• I'm waiting for all the sites that reported that Tiger would be announced on April 1 and/or released on April 15 to print their retractions — but I'm not holding my breath. And I'm sticking with my position that if you can't run a retraction, what you're doing ain't journalism.
  
  
• The best price on buying Tiger still seems to be at Amazon, where there's a $35 rebate for a total price of $95. If you need Tiger on CD instead of DVD, you have to order the DVD, and then send the DVD + $10 + this form (PDF) directly to Apple.

What should I do July 30?

There are two possible things I can be doing on July 30^th:

• Attending (and possibly speaking at) BlogHer Conference '05 in Santa Clara, CA (July 30 only).
  
  
• Attending (and possibly speaking at) ADHOC, the conference formerly known as MacHack, in Dearborn, MI (July 27-31).

I haven't applied yet to speak at either one, and don't know if it's too late in either case. If there was some way to go to both, I would, but there isn't. What should I do? I'd really appreciate your opinions in the comments—thanks!

Over, for another 12 months

Sunday: Taxes
Monday: Taxes
Tuesday: Dentist and taxes.

Wednesday can only be better.

Widget ideas

Tom and I were talking about how useless most of the currently existing Dashboard Widgets are, and this guy agrees:

What I'm afraid we're going to see is a huge influx of extraordinarily useless stuff—more iTunes controllers, duplications of existing desk-accessory-eqsue apps, more clocks, and random quote generators. Dashboard is a usability solution for lots of ideas, but it's likely to get cluttered with useless trinkets and toys.

He's also got five ideas on what he thinks would make great widgets. I can't say I agree with all of them, but it's worth checking out if you're interested in widgets.

P versus NP

On Friday night, we were watching Numb3rs, and the math geek character made a big deal out of the "P versus NP" question. Sean wanted to know more about what he was talking about, so here's a couple of links for him: Wikipedia on Complexity classes P and NP and the Clay Mathematics Institute on P vs NP.

And Sean, it's worth a million dollars if you figure out a solution (see that last link), so go for it.